hair space
- noun
- /hɛr speɪs/
- Specialized
:
espacio de pelo
- The typographer adjusted the text to include a hair space for better readability.
Examples
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Old printing presses required manual placement of a hair space by the compositor.
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I used a hair space to separate the letters in my design.
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For precise alignment, a hair space was inserted between each letter.
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The hair space is crucial for proper typography.
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For precise alignment, a hair space was inserted between each letter.
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The typographer adjusted the text to include a hair space for better readability.
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Old printing presses required manual placement of a hair space by the compositor.
How Wide
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derivable from 'hair' (connoting extreme thinness or smallness, as in 'a hair's breadth') + 'space' (a typographic gap); the noun-noun compound therefore signals a very small typographic space. This compositional pattern is regular in English technical terms, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can reasonably infer the meaning even if they haven't seen the specific term before.
Etymology
Hair space may come from the simple image of a single hair next to a tiny space. Early printers used gaps about as thin as a hair to separate letters, so the term now means 'a very small space' in printing.